Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 385 Sniper

Lihua Mountain, southern foot.

The field agents searching for Yao Yu have reached the halfway point of the mountain, where there are several abandoned orchards and a number of buildings - the villagers who are responsible for taking care of the pear trees live on the mountain most of the year. In addition, a warehouse for storing freshly picked pears is also built here.

Compared to the foot of the mountain, the terrain here has suddenly become much more complicated, and the difficulty of searching has also increased a lot.

"Prepare to release a swarm of all-terrain drones." The team leader said in the communication channel.

Several field operators carrying boxes half a person's height on their backs stopped, squatted, and opened the boxes behind them with the help of their teammates.

Although it was several hundred meters away, Sun Hang could still see it clearly with his eyesight - hundreds of mechanical spiders crawled out of the box, spread out in all directions, and in the blink of an eye crawled into the buildings that might serve as hiding places.

"S9 all-terrain autonomous intelligent drone." The team leader explained to Sun Hang, "A single soldier can carry units in a unit, which can cover complex areas with a radius of meters. It is especially suitable for search operations in urban areas with complex terrain... The only drawback is that the battery life is relatively weak. Each drone can only operate at full power for minutes when fully charged."

"Is this thing fully automatic?" Sun Hang asked.

"Before finding a suspicious target, the drone is in a fully autonomous state. Once a suspicious target is found, the corresponding intelligent module will be activated. It will automatically summon other drones within a certain range to repeatedly scan the area where the suspicious target is located, and send a notification to the control terminal...that is, us." The team leader nodded, "So, it is still quite difficult to fool these little things."

"Wouldn't it be very useful if we loaded this thing with explosives?"

"Before this type of autonomous drone was successfully developed, someone had already proposed this idea, but it was jointly boycotted by all sectors of society... Most people believe that weapons like this that have the ability to kill humans at will should not be completely controlled by programs. Otherwise, if a bug appears in the program or it is infected with a virus one day, it will be an unimaginable disaster." The team leader said with a wry smile.

"Isn't that right? I've read some documents describing modern warfare. I remember that before the monsters invaded the human world on a large scale, this type of drone had already been deployed on a large scale in wars between humans, right? Especially in the wars between the Siberian Federation and Ruthenia, and between the Hebrews and the Cannibals, drones had already evolved into the main force of war, right? In the early days, they were just bombs loaded on modified civilian drones, but in the later days, they were already mechanical dogs with small-caliber machine guns running around the battlefield, right? At that time, the Xiazhou Federation earned a lot of foreign exchange by selling these drones."

"It's different..." the team leader explained patiently, "UAVs like those mechanical dogs are all remotely controlled by humans behind the battlefield. Once the remote control is disconnected, the drone will shut down immediately."

"But autonomous drones are different. They don't need human control. They follow pre-programmed logic... If you give these drones an order to 'annihilate the target', they will even fire at enemy soldiers or even civilians who are surrendering. These situations are completely uncontrollable. Even if the program is set accurately, it is difficult to guarantee that the drone can successfully identify soldiers and civilians on a complex battlefield..."

"I think I can understand it... Humans don't want their lives and deaths to be controlled by cold machines and programs. They can accept being killed by fellow humans with body temperature and heartbeat, but they cannot accept being slaughtered by mass-produced intelligent machines. Is that what you mean?" Sun Hang concluded.

"That's right." The team leader nodded. "At that time, the main reason for opposing the autonomy of unmanned weapons was this... Some experts even believed that allowing machines to slaughter humans would even trigger the early arrival of the 'Intelligent Crisis', but no one expected it..."

"The artificial intelligence crisis didn't come, but the strange creature invasion came first." Sun Hang continued what the other party said.

“Yeah…” The team leader sighed. “But then again, although autonomous combat drones were not deployed in the war between humans, in the later stages of the Weird War, the United States across the ocean did deploy a large number of autonomous combat drones on the battlefield… In the early and middle stages of the war, their army suffered heavy casualties, and they didn’t even have enough manpower to remotely operate the drones. Using autonomous combat drones to fill the gaps on the front line was a helpless move…”

"and then?"

"Nothing happened. Drones provided little help to the war. There were even some weird virus programs. Many combat drones defected before they even left the production workshop... The most famous one was probably the 'Texas Rebellion Virus Incident'."

"The Texas Rebellion Virus Incident?" Sun Hang glanced at the hillside. It would take some time for the field operators to finish searching the housing area. Instead of waiting, he might as well listen to some stories. "Tell me about it."

"Tristan Electric Industries, headquartered in Texas, was the largest drone manufacturer in the United States at the time. Tristan had built 24 factories in Texas, and the autonomous combat drones it produced accounted for one-third of the total output of the United States at the time." The team leader of the field department was also a practitioner in the field of military drones before joining the Weird Things Research Institute. Seeing that Sun Hang was interested in these things, he continued to talk about it.

"At that time, nearly half of the United States' territory had been occupied, and the military losses exceeded 60%. If it weren't for these autonomous combat drones that kept coming off the assembly line to hold up the front line, the United States would have perished at least a month earlier."

"If nothing unexpected happens, an accident will happen by now, right?" Sun Hang asked.

"Yes, that was the sixteenth day of the countdown to the demise of the United States. At nine o'clock that night, the executives of Tristan Electric Industries received an emergency notice, informing them that the source code of their company's operating system had been forcibly tampered with by an unknown force. All technicians and front-line operators were deprived of their work rights. In the next three hours, autonomous combat drones produced by Tristan Electric Industries on battlefields all over the country pointed their guns at the human soldiers who had been fighting side by side not long ago. Not only that, the virus also quickly spread to drones produced by other companies - even though they did not use the same operating system as Tristan Electric."

"Oh my, this is going to be fun." Sun Hang suddenly thought that it would be nice to have a bucket of popcorn at this moment.

Oh, by the way, in addition to popcorn, it’s best to have a wooden fish. If you accidentally laugh out loud, just hit it twice to conserve merit as much as possible.

"It's not just the front lines that are in chaos. The autonomous combat drones in the factories are also out of control. They kill the workers, technicians and guards in the factories, open the weapons depots, and take the weapons that were originally prepared for them... They then leave the factories and take to the streets of Texas."

"Killing everyone you see?"

"That's right... According to the subsequent analysis of the drone wreckage, their core command was modified to 'eliminate all carbon-based organisms within sight.'" said the team leader, "Doesn't it sound like the Omnic Crisis?"

"It would be a shame if it wasn't made into a movie." Sun Hang nodded. "Doesn't Hollywood like to make movies of this kind?"

"Los Angeles, where Hollywood is located, was one of the first areas of the United States to fall. The army of monsters that landed from the west coast directly swept across California, and only one in ten survivors escaped." The team leader said, "It can be said that the Texas Rebellion Virus incident directly led to the demise of the United States... From that day on, the United States' defenses began to collapse, and since then, they have never been able to prevent any effective resistance."

"Tsk..."

"It is precisely for this reason that even when the war was at its most critical, our Xiazhou Federation did not relax its commitment to developing autonomous combat drones." The team leader said, "What happened on the other side of the ocean is a lesson for us."

"So there is such a thing... eh?" Sun Hang wanted to say something else, but his eyes suddenly narrowed as he looked towards the halfway point of the mountain.

He discovered that the mountain search formation, which had been advancing in an orderly manner, suddenly became seriously chaotic when it passed through a residential area.

Several field operators fell to the ground as soon as they walked into the blind spot of others.

"What's wrong?" The team leader also noticed Sun Hang's unusual expression and followed his gaze to the middle of the mountain. "Something happened. Several of your people died." Sun Hang's tone became a little more serious.

“What?!” The team leader immediately grabbed the telescope and pressed the communication button on the headset at the same time, “Group B, Group C, report the situation over there immediately! Repeat! Group B, Group C, report the situation over there immediately! I saw someone being attacked!”

"B1 report, everything is normal, no search target found!"

"B2 reports, everything is normal."

"B3 report..."

"B6 report..."

……

“B4、B5还有C2和C3呢？能听到吗？喂？B4？B5？C2C3？”组长的语气一下子变得焦急了起来。

Soon, the voices of other operators came from the communication channel: "Report to the team leader, this is B3! I found B4 at the west entrance of the plantation. He has no signs of life! Judging from the wounds on the body, the cause of death was gunshot. The 7.62mm caliber full-power bullet penetrated the throat, and his entire neck was broken!"

"Shooting?" The team leader's eyes widened. "7.62mm caliber full-power bullet? This is impossible! According to intelligence, Yao Yu only has a mm caliber pistol!"

"It wasn't Yao Yu." Sun Hang said calmly, "Even if Yao Yu had a 7.62mm caliber gun, he couldn't have shot four people at the same time... What's more, we didn't hear any gunshots."

"But B3 told me that he died of a gunshot wound. I believe in my men's judgment. With their experience, they wouldn't..."

Before the team leader could finish his words, the communication channel rang again.

"I'm C1. I found C2. He...he's dead. The cause of death is—"

C1's communications suddenly stopped.

Sun Hang clearly saw that when a field operator was running towards one of the corpses, his body suddenly paused, then fell to the ground and remained motionless.

At this moment, Sun Hang also captured the trajectory that was almost invisible to the naked eye.

"C1?! C1?!"

"Stop shouting, he's also been sniped." Sun Hang patted the team leader on the shoulder, "But I can see the direction the bullet is coming from."

"Where?" the team leader asked immediately.

"On another mountain, about four thousand meters away, ultra-long-range sniping." Sun Hang pointed to another mountain east of Lihua Mountain. Most of the mountain was hidden in the fog, and there was no drone lighting in the sky. From their perspective, they could only see a huge black shadow, lurking in the night.

"That mountain... is Zhangjia Mountain!" The team leader quickly reacted. "It's about 4,300 meters away from Lihua Mountain. At this distance and with this visibility, sniping... How is this possible?!"

"Nothing is impossible." Sun Hang acted calmly. "Five of your men have already died. You need to learn to accept reality."

"Everyone!" The team leader was stunned for a moment, and immediately shouted in the communication channel, "The sniper's position is at Zhangjiashan in the east direction! It is four kilometers away from you. Everyone, find shelter on the spot-"

As soon as the team leader said the word "cover" in "cover", Sun Hang reached out and cut off his communication, "Don't worry, wait a moment."

"What are you waiting for?!"

"Wait for the sniper to fire another shot." I just saw the trajectory but didn't have time to lock on the sniper's specific position.

"You mean, let my people be bait?"

At this moment, a tiny spark that was so tiny that it was impossible to detect with the naked eye burst into flames on the top of Zhangjia Mountain. The team leader only felt a strong airflow rushing around him, knocking him to the ground, followed by a loud bang that was loud enough to tear his eardrums!

Sun Hang has disappeared from the spot!

The sniper's shooting distance was more than 4,300 meters. The opponent was on the top of the mountain shooting towards the mountainside. All in all, the shooting distance was at least 4,500 meters.

This sniper is a person with special abilities, or the sniper rifle in his hand is a strange weapon.

With this idea in mind, Sun Hang ran headfirst into the rock wall of Zhangjiashan and "carved" a large human-shaped hole in the rock wall.

"Damn it... I need to practice emergency braking more..."

Sun Hang climbed out of the cave cursing, but when he reached the sniper position, the opponent had long disappeared, leaving behind only some debris that he had no time to take away and a flattened straw mat.

(End of this chapter)